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Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

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Re: Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

#201

Post by dlgtho »

walrus01 wrote: post #79

The warrant is ridiculous even without the tor part. Read pages #6 and #7. http://www.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2016/04/08/1460... ISPs maintain hash values of known child porn files? Show me a single ISP in the Seattle area that runs any of its residential customer http traffic through a caching proxy that examines and hashes each file, I'll eat my shoe.

Don't know about Seattle but my ISP does run a transparent proxy that does mitm for http and caches files. They use http://www.peerapp.com/ devices to do so. I was also successful in poisoning their cache quite easily

Re: Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

#202

Post by cplease »

usrusr wrote: post #55

I never understood the value of a judge authorization requirements for surveillance. Has there ever been a recorded case where the request was denied, except maybe for even more shady reasons? I just don't see any incentive the judge could have to actually make an informed decision instead of just issuing rubber-stamp approval. Even in the unlikely worst case scenario of a scandal of rampant spouse-spying, a simple "…

> Has there ever been a recorded case where the request was denied, except maybe for even more shady reasons?

Yes. And most are never reported, since law enforcement will either fix what was wrong with their application, pursue a different line of investigation, or drop the investigation.

Perhaps you are thinking of FISA court surveillance requests in the national security arena. Those have been revealed to have an extremely low denial rate. But nonzero. And that's a different space than criminal search warrants.

Perhaps as important as the level of judicial scrutiny of warrants in the first instance, and their denial rate, is subsequent review. An improperly granted warrant is invalid. A party with notice of an invalid warrant can move to quash it. A criminal defendant implicated with evidence from an invalid warrant may be able to have the "fruit of the poisonous tree" suppressed.

Just a few: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=%22in+re+search+warrant%22

Your alternative is ridiculous; saying the police can conduct so many searches without respect as to whether or not there is probable cause that a crime has been committed and that the search will yield evidence of a crime.

The point of the warrant is to force police to show probable cause to a neutral arbiter. That, plus judicial review and the suppression rule, plus federal §1983/Bivens claims, provide a powerful check on arbitrary behavior by law enforcement. Of course most warrants are granted; for the most part police don't waste time going to judges saying outright "Joe Bloggs is suspicious, unlikable, and has a Green Party yard sign. We want to go turn his house over just to harass him with a fishing expedition." If the police are corrupt and abusing warrants, what would their motivation be to use them properly just because they had some arbitrary quota? If they use them properly, what purpose does a quota serve?

The idea that having to show a defensible reason to a judge with a paper trail is worse, betrays a complete ignorance of the legal system, and how much worse it could be in a really authoritarian society that doesn't have meaningful constitutional protections.

Re: Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

#203

Post by cplease »

derefr wrote: post #179
wookasz wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judges don't decide cases. The jury does. Judges are there to lead the proceedings and instruct jurors in matters of the law. No evidence or facts exist outside the courtroom. Only what is stated in court can be considered. It is against the law for a juror to research an issue outside the courtroom.

Most trials don't have juries. Think small-claims court, divorce court, etc. That's the default—the judge, judging. Jury-trials are a special case, there for when where no judge could be impartial enough, but they're still implemented in terms of a judge sitting there and then delegating some, but not all, of their responsibilities to the jurors.

The entire story here is about crime, specifically in the USA. All criminal defendants in the USA are entitled to a trial by jury on all factual elements of the offense to reach a verdict, unless explicitly waived by the defendant. Most defendants waive a trial (usually by plea of guilty), but relatively few who go to trial waive a jury.

Judges do rule on pretrial proceedings including warrant applications; although in federal and some state jurisdictions grand juries still return indictments on felonies.

That said it is wrong that judges do not decide criminal cases. Besides ruling on evidence and instructing jurors, they can also acquit, dismiss, or declare mistrial without the jury.

N.B. Right to jury may not apply to so-called "petty" and/or non-criminal offenses which can carry as much as 6 months jail.

Re: Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

#204

Post by yason »

Obviously running a TOR node will attract interest. It can be debated whether acting as a TOR router/carrier should impose on the operator at least some requirements to divulge connection logs to the authorities -- not that TOR would actually produce any meaningful logs in the first place. That's roughly what physical ISPs need to do if one of their IP addresses is associated with child porn. There's also the argument that if TOR nodes were given a guaranteed free pass when it comes to illegal content then why wouldn't people just run a TOR node and an open wifi on their home network just to cover their ass should they intend to use a torrent of shady network services.

However, the question that pops into my mind is that given how easy the trigger finger on child porn actually is in the current climate, then why are the producers and consumers of child porn still on the regular internet and not in the TOR darknet? If consumers are already willing to use TOR to access these sites there's no barrier to switch at all. The producers could even offer a legit site with no illegal content hosted there but which just redirects the browser to the (current) TOR address. I suppose there's a market for consumers who aren't using TOR but I would suspect that segment to be continuously shrinkin in the form of being prosecuted.

Re: Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

#205

Post by cplease »

riskable wrote: post #86

Here's what I don't understand: You go to a judge for a warrant and the only piece of evidence you have an IP address . How is an IP address even remotely considered "evidence" enough to search someone's home? An IP address is not an identity. It is not a location. It is not even permanent in most cases! I cannot fathom that police are granted warrants to search and seize people's homes and property based solely on,…

Seriously?

They didn't just have an IP address. Police had an IP address and timestamp of a video of child-rape, as provided by 4-chan, said IP address belonging to an ISP as provided by MaxMind, and said ISP confirming its ownership of the IP and providing a subscriber name and address for that IP and timestamp, indicating that the posting originated from a cable modem at a residential location.

If you don't find child rape to be compelling, substitute an email plotting a bomb attack, a suicide note, etc. etc.

Police are supposed to ignore that, and what, ask for a signed confession? They don't need proof beyond a reasonable doubt, they need probable cause that there is evidence of a crime. Tor is deliberately designed to frustrate what police call "evidence." The police are perfectly justified in searching that location for evidence that might lead to the source of the criminal activity.

Re: Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

#206

Post by gozur88 »

jobu wrote: post #11

Money quote in the last paragraph: "When we get into things like this," [Judge William Downing] said, "anonymizing stuff, that’s well over my head technologically, then it becomes very murky and hazy." That sounds to me like the judge likely wouldn't have known what a TOR node was if the police had told him these guys were running one. Technology isn't slowing down, so how can we make sure the law keeps up?

Sounds like just the judge you'd want to go to if you had a warrant that really wouldn't fly if he understood the technology.

Re: Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

#207

Post by DanBC »

khc wrote: post #197
devishard wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, this is not how you do crypto. Crypto algorithms have to be understood with regards to what guarantees they provide and in what context. Your approach here is basically ZOMG COLLISIONS ARE BAD when in fact collision-resistance was never a property of this hash function and a collision doesn't provide an attacker with any power they didn't already have. If an attacker has the power to create a non-CP file that ha…

So that they don't need to obtain a copy of the image in the first place? Also a much lesser crime if they get caught.

Bob is found with a file of pseudo random data that matches a hash on the database.

There's no evidence of other images of child sexual abuse on his machine; there's no history of sites that distribute images of child sexual abuse; there's no history of the file being opened by Bob; Bob claims that he didn't know the file was there and he doesn't know what it is.

How does that benefit an attacker? How does that benefit an attacker more than just taking actual images of child sexual abuse and putting those on Bob's computer?

Re: Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

#208

Post by MertsA »

ivanca wrote: post #140
downandout wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children provides ISPs with a hash database of known illegal images [1]. ISPs are then required by statute to notify the government when images with matching hashes cross their network [2]. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258C [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258A

All you have to do is get access to that DB and then you have A1 blackmail material, ready to bury any enemy of yours, specially in America, specially if they have/deal-with children.

Actually access to that DB wouldn't do much good. It's just the hash of the file, not the file itself.

Re: Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

#209

Post by woliveirajr »

click170 wrote: post #166
downandout wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children provides ISPs with a hash database of known illegal images [1]. ISPs are then required by statute to notify the government when images with matching hashes cross their network [2]. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258C [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258A

I always assumed antivirus venders were given a copy of the list as well. It's a way to scan millions of computers without the owners of those computers knowing they are even being checked. It's perfect. It also begs the question can you get around detection by re-encoding the files so the hashes don't match?

Censorship. I don't want any ISP to filter my files because "they are harmfull". Or someone can think that a good Coke is bad for your health, and filter their ads? Or that masturbation is bad, and filter all XXX images?

Re: Judge Who Authorized Police Search of Privacy Activists Wasn't Told About Tor

#210

Post by baldfat »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #161
ivanca wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All you have to do is get access to that DB and then you have A1 blackmail material, ready to bury any enemy of yours, specially in America, specially if they have/deal-with children.

I know you're being facetious but seriously... what a way to easily ruin someone's life. This system needs reform.

This is 100% true for anyone in IT could ruin anyone they want to. I am shocked the number of people caught doing this is so low but few people realize the power an IT person has.
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